5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Be Worried About the PEEPLE App

The terrifying-sounding new app "Peeple" -- a Yelp-style rating system where people can rate other people -- is understandably causing a stir, but here's 5 reasons why, as unpleasant as this thing sounds, it might not actually be the end of the world:

Every single Yelp review ends up being tons of people liking the restaurant and tons of people hating the restaurant and ultimately it all blends together and everyone ignores it.

Sure, if a particular movie critic you usually agree with writes a scathing review of a film and makes many astute points, then yes, that's probably a review worth some weight. But that's no different than if a friend of yours who you trust tells you that some person is actually shitty. You're gonna rely on that, not the aggregate reviews of the same faceless hordes who call every remotely well-liked restaurant 'overrated'.

At some point, those negative reviews become a meaningless obligatory necessity that don't carry any actual weight, they're just things that 'have' to exist when the review pool of anything is large enough.

If you read an extremely furious, extremely personal 'Peeple' review of someone, are you more likely to react by thinking "wow, the person they're reviewing sure sounds terrible!" or "wow, the person who took the time to sign into this app to write an angry 7-paragraph takedown of another human being and included tons of way-too-personal information is probably a fucking lunatic?"

Perhaps this sounds a little motherly, in the "anyone who doesn't want to be your friend because of this reason isn't a friend at all" sense, but are you really worried that a rational, genuinely kind and interesting human who might have otherwise had a friendship or relationship with you, or would've hired you professionally, is going to decide to not do that because of other strangers' reviews on an app?

Have you seen the internet? It's a sentient dumpster fire that sells movie tickets. If people are planning to unfairly slander you or bully you, they can already do it on Facebook, Twitter, in comments sections, or any million other places where WAY MORE PEOPLE will see it than on some new app that everyone already hates and distrusts.

That's not really a good thing, obviously, but like, this app isn't starting the dumpster fire, it's just potentially tossing another oiled-up tire onto the pile.